


Every Hateful Instrument

by natsinator



Series: In the Shadow of Heaven [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:55:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27537943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natsinator/pseuds/natsinator
Summary: A prequel to In the Shadow of Heaven.
Series: In the Shadow of Heaven [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2079846
Comments: 6
Kudos: 1





	1. To Gain the World but Lose My Soul

**Author's Note:**

> This story is probably of general interest to a whole of two people, but I have the hope that anybody who enjoys my logh fic will also enjoy this.
> 
> You may notice canon inconsistencies between this story and ItSoH (if you’ve read ItSoH). This is intentional, as I’m intending to rewrite ItSoH and change a few plot points (mostly worldbuilding stuff)
> 
> Why am I not posting this on royalroad? Because I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing with this.
> 
> I make no promises that this story will stay available on the archive. I might take it down. depends. (inside of you are two conflicting ideas: “publish everything to the internet the instant it’s written” and “jfc don’t do that”)
> 
> The title might also change.

_ _

_ 1522/8/26 AFE, aboard the  _ Cruel Maiden

The harsh buzz of the room doorbell would have woken Aymon up, if he he hadn’t already been awake. He was on his back on his slim bed, his body forming a right angle as his legs stretched far above him, pressed straight up against the wall. He was looking at his tablet, re-reading an amusingly crude letter that Obra had sent him, which he hastily hid and switched to something more innocuous before getting up to answer the door. He wasn’t in his uniform, but he couldn’t be expected to be this late at night.

“Sir,” the soldier at the door said, “there’s an urgent message from Emerri for you.” The words ‘urgent message from the capital’ almost never meant anything good, but Aymon wasn’t one to panic.

Aymon rubbed his eyes. “We’re in ansible range already?”

“Just getting the first planetary radio now, sir. We’re four light hours out,” the soldier said.

“Can I have the message?”

“It’s marked secret disposition, sir. You’ll have to take it in the radio room.”

“Ah,” Aymon said. “Tell— uh who’s waiting on me to read this?— tell whoever that I’ll be there in a moment.”

“Yes, sir. It’s Captain Maynard. Her message said that yours contains new orders for the ship, but she can’t hear them until you give them.”

Oh, so the situation was very bad, then. “Right,” Aymon said. “I’ll be there in a second.” Without waiting on a response, he shut the door in the soldier’s face and pulled a clean black uniform cassock out from the tiny closet, slipping it on over his undershirt and pants without bothering to find a new button down to go underneath. When he opened the door again, the message-of-a-message bearer had vanished, and Aymon jogged through the long, gently curving ship’s hallways until he reached the command areas. The ship usually ran on three quarters of Emerri standard gravity, so Aymon felt like he could half fly, his strides longer than they had any right to be. 

The radio room itself was a hive of activity, with operators at all of the closely packed computer consoles processing the flood of data that always came in whenever the ship returned to ansible range. Captain Maynard herself was leaning over one console, watching what looked like a news video coming up from the surface of the planet they were heading towards. She straightened when she saw Aymon enter the room.

“Apprentice Sandreas,” she said, her tone annoyed. “I was under the impression that this would be an easy little political trip, not something that requires secret course change missives sent over my head as soon as we start getting close to our destination.”

“Captain, you know about as much about the situation as I do. Can I please see what’s so urgent?”

One of the soldiers standing by directed him into a secure room, barely larger than a closet, with a desk and a computer to show Aymon the message. He input his relevant security details, and the message package that was for him illuminated the screen. It was just two personal messages, and then the set of new instructions for the  _ Cruel Maiden.  _ The first message was from his mentor, Caron Herrault, Voice of the Empire. The second was from Obra, his fellow apprentice.

He opened the one from Herrault first.

_ Aymon, _

_ There’s no way to be pleasant about this, so I won’t be. Jalena was killed earlier this week (8/22). I need you to come home for the funeral.  _

_ This has not yet been announced. I informed her father, but aside from him and the bare essentials of personnel, no one has yet been told. I didn’t want you to find out from the news. I know you were close. _

_ You want to know what happened. In short, while attending a private gathering at the home of a friend of Governor Salois, explosives hidden within the house detonated. While attempting to protect the other guests from the ensuing fire and collapse of the building, another sensitive was able to fatally wound Jalena. If she hadn’t been distracted, she would have survived. She was taken to the nearest hospital, where she died. _

_ I’ve appointed the Fleet leader on Jenjin, Rear Admiral Jiang, to take her place as the Imperial Advisor, along with his regular duties. Increasing Fleet presence on the planet should be enough of a deterrent to prevent anything else. The motives for the attack are still unknown. It could be that the attack was aimed at Salois, and it was only luck that Jalena was caught up in it, or it could have been a motivated attack on her specifically, or on imperial presence on the planet. The investigation is ongoing. _

_ I can’t write more. This is the kind of thing that I need to see you in person for. You know how I feel. _

_ God keep you, _

_ Caron _

Aymon’s breath frozen in his throat by the time that he reached the end of the letter. He couldn’t quite wrap his brain around it. He had last seen Jalena three months ago, when she had left Emerri to take up the temporary posting on Jenjin. They had spent the night together, him and Obra and Jalena. But Jalena had snuck out of Obra’s room before Aymon had woken up, and they hadn’t gotten a chance to say goodbye. None of them were sentimental people, and Herrault appointing her as the Imperial Advisor on Jenjin was supposed to be temporary, and the three of them were always going all over the place anyway, so it wasn’t as though that had been any different. Except now she was dead.

His hand trembled as he opened the letter from Obra.

_ Aymon, _

_ Herrault won’t give you the details, but it’s worse to not have them. I pulled these out of Herrault’s report. She knows I have it, but I think she has bigger things to worry about than me going through it. The medical record and photographs are attached, anyway.  _

_ Read it, or don’t. But I know you will, and if you didn’t, you’d come home and wonder. _

_ I don’t think she felt much of it. She was always better at that kind of blocking than I was. I guess I should get better at it. _

_ Pisses me off that she got all those other people out. Fuck her. _

_ This fucking sucks. _

_ If you die, I’ll kill you. _

_ -Obra _

Obra was right that he would want to see the photographs. He opened the letter’s attachment, titled “Marne, J. Medical Records, Askinov Memorial Hospital” and scrolled directly past the medical jargon until he found the relevant images.

Jalena’s abdomen had been torn completely open, from about halfway down her ribs all the way through to her pelvis, and what had once been her organs was just a red, unrecognizable mash. Her face was unharmed, somehow, and he looked at the expression on it and tried to imagine that it was peaceful and satisfied, rather than simply slack. He stared at the photographs, unable to close them even though the image made his stomach churn. He shouldn’t have looked at them. They were burning themselves into his vision, replacing his memories of Jalena as bright, beautiful, and alive with… this.

He closed the photographs and tried to calm his breathing, organizing his thoughts. He needed to send a letter to the planet they were headed towards, no, two letters, one to the interplanetary trade consortium that he had been coming to address, the other to Herrault, to be sent over the ansible, telling her that he would be returning to Emerri as soon as possible. Then he would have to talk to the captain about getting the ship turned around. He organized these tasks in his mind, each one falling into place and pushing out the sight of Jalena’s eviscerated body bare on the hospital bed, at least for the moment that it took to complete the task.

* * *

_ 1522/8/36, Emerri _

The journey home took a tenday, even with the route efficiency of a Fleet ship as compared to a Guild ship. Aymon couldn’t quite imagine the reality that was going to await him when he returned, and so in his conscious hours, he tried to distract himself with nothingness, studying some, reading some, meditating as much as he could bear, and going down to the 0G gym in the guts of the  _ Cruel Maiden _ , where there were plenty of competitions to be had with whatever officers or crew happened to be around at the time. If there was one thing Aymon was good at, it was keeping himself occupied with mindless diversions.

Still, even he couldn’t go without sleep, and it was at night that his thoughts inevitably turned back to Obra and Jalena. He had a dream, one that started out like so many others he had had. They were all together, in the dark, their breathing perfectly in sync, connected through the power. The two of them were lit up in Aymon’s vision, and he was simply watching, but he could feel everything all the same, in the way their thoughts and bodies always blended, one single creature of Aymon/Obra/Jalena, moving in tandem. Obra held Jalena’s waist, then kissed down beneath her breast, across her stomach, and everywhere they kissed there was that blossoming wound, Jalena’s guts spilling outward. There was no pain, perhaps because imagining such pain would wake him, but there was horror, watching it unfold.

He had that same dream several times over the journey, always waking up with a shock, fumbling in the dark for anything: Obra, the lightswitch, whatever he could think of to grasp at at that moment.

When he finally did make it back to Emerri, he disembarked from the  _ Cruel Maiden _ on a ground-to-space shuttle, so that he would be spared the extra travel time of taking the elevator and then a flight. He landed in the capital city airport, and was greeted on the runway by two people: one of whom he had been desperately looking forward to seeing, the other whom he had been doing his best to forget about.

Aymon got out of the shuttle, waking down its short staircase onto the tarmac, stumbling slightly as he tried to mentally recalibrate to the full gravity of Emerri, watching as Frae Herrault and Obra Zacks crossed the distance from the airport itself, its glass facade glinting in the golden, late-afternoon sun. It was chilly out: winter had come to this part of Emerri while Aymon had been away, and his cassock wasn’t really enough to protect him from the cold.

Obra and Frae could have been mistaken for cousins, though there was no relationship between them. Obra’s skin was a slightly deeper brown, but they had the same black hair. Obra wore theirs in long black braids, but Frae kept hers short. Obra had a wide, exuberant mouth over a narrow chin, deep-set black eyes and sharp cheekbones, but Frae’s face was childish and round still, a few years younger than Aymon himself was. Obra was magnificent; Frae was annoying.

“Welcome home!” Frae called out as she got closer. She was bundled up in a sporty blue jacket, but her light skirt whipped around her bare knees in the breeze. “I’m glad you’re back.”

Aymon didn’t know what to say to that, since he was not glad to be back at all, but now he was close enough to her that he had to say something, so he said, “Yeah.”

Frae grabbed him, wrapping him in an uncomfortable hug. His eyes met Obra’s, a look passing between them that signalled their mutual understanding, if nothing else. Frae didn’t let go of Aymon until Obra said, “I’ve got a car waiting for us.”

“Thanks,” Aymon said. “Glad you’re looking out for my well being.”

“If I’m not, I don’t know who fucking is,” Obra said. Their voice was harsh. “Let’s go.”

“Is Herrault around?” Aymon asked.

“She’s at Stonecourt,” Obra replied. “She’ll want to see you as soon as we get there.”

Aymon nodded. He followed Obra and Frae out towards the parking area, his small suitcase thumping against his legs as he walked. In the car, Aymon got into the passenger seat, while Frae was forced to take the back. Obra drove, because Obra enjoyed driving, especially fast, and especially recklessly. Aymon trusted them not to send them all to early graves, but perhaps he shouldn’t have. He wanted the ride to be silent, but Frae insisted on filling it with useless chatter, until Aymon very pointedly asked, “Why did you come meet me at the airport anyway?”

“I wanted to see you,” Frae said. “That’s all.”

“You haven’t even said anything about Jalena,” Aymon said.

Frae’s face stilled for a second, Aymon catching a glimpse of her in the rearview. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about her,” she said finally.

“Why would I not want to talk about her, when she was one of the three people in the universe who—“

Obra slammed on the brakes as they approached the security gates of the huge capitol building, Stonecourt. Obra presented their security details at the gate, and they were let down without fuss into the underground parking area. The security car that had been following them without intervening also pulled in.

“You’re not coming with me while I talk to your mother,” Aymon said shortly to Frae. He glanced at Obra. “Are you coming?”

“No,” Obra said. “Not much to say, is there?”

Aymon pursed his lips, but nodded. “I’ll see you later.”

Obra nodded. “After dinner.”

“What are you doing after dinner?” Frae asked.

“Nothing you could possibly understand,” Aymon said as he got out of the car. His footsteps echoed in the parking garage, and behind him, he heard Obra and Frae start talking about something inconsequential, Obra doing their best to keep Frae away from him as he headed up the stairs into Stonecourt proper. He could have taken the elevator, but he was suddenly reluctant to go see his mentor, unsure of how that conversation was going to go. He had had enough time over the journey to get his emotions under control, but the routine and undisrupted nature of space travel meant that his resolve hadn’t actually been tested yet. If only Frae hadn’t been in the car, he could have had an actual conversation with Obra, but she insisted on following after him at every turn.

Herrault’s office was on the first floor of the building, but directly in the center, facing the courtyard. The sun had dipped below the building by the time that Aymon got there, so the hallway windows showed the bare garden in deep shadow. He could just let himself into the office at any time, a privilege shared by only a few people, but he stopped and talked to Herrault’s secretary first, and knocked out of politeness.

The door swung open, seemingly of its own volition, though Aymon was well used to Herrault using the power for casual tasks. It was almost her trademark, and she was often criticised in the press for it— it was uncouth. But that was the furthest thing from Aymon’s mind right then as he stepped inside the office.

Herrault was seated at her heavy wooden desk, the lights in the room warm and dim, probably because she hadn’t turned all of them on as the sun was setting. She wasn’t looking up at him, instead studying something on her computer. Her grey-streaked black hair, cut in a childish bob, fell around her face, the usual gold clip that held her bangs to the top of her head sitting discarded on the desk. Aymon stood at attention, waiting for her to acknowledge him. It didn’t take very long. It was clear that she was composing herself, rather than playing a power game: he could see the tension in her shoulders, and the way her breath was hitched, then deep.

“I’m glad you had a safe trip back,” Herrault finally said.

“I don’t think pirates usually go out of their way to harry Fleet ships,” Aymon said. “I wish I could have gotten here sooner.”

“Ships have their speeds. Did you read the news, when you jumped in?”

“No,” Aymon said. “Am I wrong that there were no revelations waiting for me?”

“We arrested the guilty party,” she said.

“Motive?”

“It was intended for the governor.” Her voice was bitter. “Jalena wasn’t even supposed to be there.”

“The governor was lucky, then.”

“Take a seat, Aymon,” Herrault said, looking at him, then waving at the chair across her desk. “Please.”

He did so, sitting stiffly. 

“I’ve had to think a lot about this,” Herrault said. “I assume you have been, too.”

“I’ve tried not to.”

“I never expected anything like this to happen.”

“You told us when you took us on that it would be dangerous.”

She shook her head. “I was speaking from my own experience as First. I had had two attempts on my life, at the time.”

“But your apprenticeship wasn’t dangerous?”

“No, or, at least, not in this way.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and rubbed her eyes. “I spoke to the Emperor.”

“And what did they say?”

“I asked if I was making the same mistake as my mentor.”

Aymon leaned forward. “What mistake do you think you’re making.”

“Did I ever tell you what happened to the other apprentices in my cohort?” Herrault asked. Aymon glanced over at the wall, at a photo he had often seen but rarely thought about. Herrault, as a young woman, stood with two young men in front of an older man— he knew that was First Wyland, the Voice before Herrault. All four of them were wearing identical black cassocks and red capes, like the one that Herrault was wearing now.

“It never seemed that urgent to me. You’ve been First since before I was born.”

She pointed at the young man on her left in the picture. “Yusuf killed himself, four years into the apprenticeship. Milo— he…” she trailed off. “I think he killed himself, too, in a way.”

“How?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Aymon wanted to protest that she was the one who had brought it up, but he bit his tongue just in time. There were plenty of moments in which to push his luck with Herrault; this was not one of them. “So, what is your mistake?”

“Wyland picked people who were too tender-hearted to handle the strain, he always said. This job eats you from the inside. It doesn’t stop eating you.”

Aymon resisted the urge to make a face. She might be sentimental, but he was not. “Are you worried about me?”

She continued as though he hadn’t said anything. “When I picked you, and Obra, and Jalena, I thought I was picking people who knew how to do what they had to do. I felt how stubborn she was. All three of you. Made the Emperor laugh at me. They told me that you all would be a handful, especially together. I had made my bed and now I had to lie in it.”

“I don’t see how that’s a mistake,” Aymon said. “You know we can do anything you send us to.”

She shook her head. “You can do anything you decide you need to,” she said. “And Jalena decided that she needed to protect everyone in that building before herself. And she did.”

Aymon scowled. She was right. Maybe Jalena was too tender-hearted like that. “I won’t do that,” Aymon said. “I understand what the stakes are.”

“Not even if it was a choice between you and Obra?” she asked.

“Obra is perfectly capable of protecting themself.”

“Everybody has their weaknesses, Aymon.”

“Maybe. But it wasn’t yours, and it isn’t going to be mine.”

She was still looking at the photograph. “I wish I could say that I hope you’re right.”

“What do you mean?”

“Milo and Yusuf and Jalena can go in peace to God’s house,” she said.

“Jalena died with her guts on the floor of a burning building,” Aymon said. “I don’t call that peaceful.”

“I have to offer you the opportunity to leave,” she said. “If you want to. I’ll release you from the apprenticeship. You can go live your life without… all of this.”

“No,” he snapped immediately. “You offered the same thing to Obra, I assume?”

“Yes. And they refused, as well.”

“And if they hadn’t? And if I had said that I wanted to leave as well? You’d be getting your way, with Frae next in line.”

“Aymon,” she said, her voice tired. “No.”

“I don’t think for a second that you’d take a new set of apprentices.”

“It was an offer,” she said. “To save your soul, if you wanted to take it. The Emperor has made the line of succession very clear.”

“You should have known that I wouldn’t take it.”

She looked down at her hands. “Jalena wouldn’t have, either.”

For some reason, there was grim satisfaction in that. “You picked stubborn apprentices.”

“And I pray to God that you and Obra will be stubborn in the way I intended.”

Aymon nodded. “How long will I be on Emerri for?”

“I don’t know. I think I’d like to keep you close by, for a while.”

“And Obra?”

“The same.”

“I’ll content myself with that, then.”

“I’m glad to have you back, Aymon.” She reached across the desk, offering him her hand. He grasped it for a second, her skin weathered and dry. Through the physical connection, in the power, she sent a true swell of relief and gratitude that he was back, though she noticeably cut it off before the feeling could venture anywhere towards love. Aymon offered the best he had in return: the hard, stubborn assurance at his core. He wasn’t going anywhere.

* * *

It didn’t take long for Aymon to unpack his few belongings back into his apartment, boil some noodles that had been in his cupboard for months, and eat them. It was then, technically, “after dinner” which meant that he could go find Obra, in the apartment down the hall. 

He had to pass Jalena’s door to do so, of course. As was his habit, as he had done for years, every time he walked past, he rapped on the door, half to annoy her, half as a friendly “I’m here” gesture. But there was no chance that Jalena would stick her head out the door and yell at him, or better, follow him the rest of the way down the hall to Obra’s suite. 

Their door wasn’t locked. It usually wasn’t, when Obra was home. He opened it and slipped inside. All the lights were off, so it was pitch black the moment that Aymon shut the door behind him. Obra, who was prone to migraines, had even at one point gone around and taped over every clock display and fire detector alert light in the apartment, so that they could have pure darkness when they drew the blackout curtains over the windows.

Aymon stretched out his awareness in the power, sending it through the quiet apartment. He could feel Obra’s presence in the bedroom, but it was dimmed, which meant that they were asleep. His use of the power made it easy for him to navigate the room, even in the pitch blackness, and he came into the bedroom and undressed down to his underwear and undershirt, laying his cassock neatly on the chair. He slid into bed next to Obra, warm under the blankets, crooking his knees against theirs and draping his arm over their waist, his forehead pressed against their shoulder.

He matched his breathing to theirs, pushing every thought out of his mind. Meditation hadn’t come easy to him as a child, but now it did, though he was careful not to slip too far down into it, because he had no desire to fall into Obra’s dream as they twitched every so often in his arms. He wasn’t sure how long it took for them to startle awake. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. When Aymon allowed himself to get wrapped up in the power, time passed strangely.

Obra rolled over in bed, facing Aymon. “You talked to Herrault?” they asked, voice clear despite having just woken up. They were good at jumping right back into things. Obra was always either awake or asleep, never drowsy.

“Yeah,” Aymon said. He stroked some of their hair, tucking it behind their ear. “Don’t tell me you were tempted by her offer.”

“To quit?” Obra asked, then sighed. “It was more tempting to be asked it the day I learned she was dead. You’ve had some time to—“

“Get over it?”

“Process.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not over it,” Obra said. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

“I had nightmares, on the way back,” Aymon said.

“Doesn’t surprise me. About her?”

“Yeah.”

“You bring this up because you want to show me?” Obra knocked their forehead gently against Aymon’s. “I have my own nightmares, you know.”

“I could tell.”

But Obra was already pressing themself onto Aymon, their bodies symmetrical, fitting together, the close contact making things easier. They held hands, the old, familiar game, where Obra would squeeze Aymon’s right hand, and the instant he felt it he would squeeze with his left, around and around in a circle, until the sensation and focus and the power thrumming just underneath their skins matched up, and they slid into each others’ minds, easy and familiar as their own.

Two thoughts were at the forefront of Aymon’s mind: the first, his nightmare, where Obra’s kisses had left that blossoming wound against Jalena’s body, and the painless terror that accompanied it; the second, that phrase that Obra had used in their letter; “I don’t think she felt much of it.”

Obra understood, as they always did, and offered up their own nightmare as an offering: a burning building, a chance to save Jalena, or a chance to escape, and the inability to choose between those two things, leaving them trapped as the fire inched closer, and even worse, the nameless terror hidden in the dark smoke.

The conversation that Aymon had had with Herrault played in his mind, her asking if he would sacrifice himself for Obra. There was a dark amusement from Obra when he responded in the negative. Satisfaction.

“I only would want to save Jalena because she clearly wouldn’t save herself,” Obra’s thought bounced between them. Would Aymon have saved Jalena? He didn’t think so. There was guilt in that thought, and then a stubborn rejection of guilt, even if Jalena would have saved him. She had saved strangers. That echoing thought made their hearts beat faster, Obra’s anger whipping up like a fire.

“Don’t ever let me go to Jenjin,” Obra thought. “I’d kill the governor myself for it.” The mental words were accompanied by a flash of vivid fantasy that Obra had failed to stifle, but Aymon didn’t pick at it. “She was worth more than a hundred of them. A thousand.”

In the silent space as Obra tamped down their thoughts, Aymon’s nightmare rose again to their minds, and he turned the image over and over, unable to deny its power over him. He felt like he needed some way to answer the inherent question, the repulsive painlessness. If he knew what it had felt like, there would be no more wondering.

Obra’s mental question was answered before it was even asked.

“She was always better at blocking it out,” Obra thought.

“You practice, then,” Aymon responded.

Obra shivered, but it wasn’t clear which of their bodies actually performed the motion. Probably both did. They were one and the same. Obra could lift Aymon’s arm just as Aymon could direct Obra’s hands to peel off his undershirt, both feeling both sets of sensations and movements at once. They were one creature in this space, though it felt curiously empty without Jalena’s stalwart presence. It wasn’t as though they had never done this without Jalena. They had, often. And Jalena and Obra had lain together while Aymon was away more times than he could imagine. Once, he and Jalena had even gotten very high at a party and had slept together, even though under normal circumstances they both found that prospect very unappealing without Obra. 

But they were both thinking of her now, so her absence was a wound.

Obra’s hands traced over Aymon’s chest, and they found the lowest part of his ribs, kissing it. The power danced on their fingertips, the tip of their tongue, rising to the forefront of their minds. The sensation of Obra’s lips had told them where to direct the power, and they did, sending it through Aymon’s body, lighting up his nerves with fire and electricity, first just a burning spark, then they kissed lower, across his body the way he had seen them do to Jalena in the dream. 

The fire grew hotter and brighter, the pain unimaginably bad, but in that shared mental space, Aymon was in greater control of his body and mind, existing half-outside of it, so he didn’t scream or even twitch, just felt it, as though he was bearing the weight of Jalena’s death for her, somehow. He could feel his skin tearing open, the hot rush of blood out, these phantom signals that Obra flooded him with.

The pain was a rolling wave, now, and it crested, and even though Aymon was half-someone else, there was only so much that a person could bear. Obra’s power was driving directly through his nerves and into his brain, and he passed out.

It either took him a moment to come to, or Obra had already been crying, because he regained consciousness to them sobbing against his chest: full body, wracking sobs. There wasn’t anything he could say, not apologies, not condolences, so he just wrapped himself around Obra, holding them tight, the comfort of being a warm body to cling to the only comfort either of them could give or get.


	2. A Head Like an Open Wound

_1518/03/02 AFE, aboard the_ Bluebeetle, _near Redding Station_

Hail and Farewell Vinright knew that his parents loved him, because they had convinced the captain of their ship to go far out of their normal ambit, docking at one of the most populous black stations, so that they could find a doctor who knew more than the one who worked aboard their ship. The _Bluebeetle_ ’s doctor, Cassie Mayfair, had been stymied by the fifteen year old’s complaints of constant, overwhelming headaches, and with the limited diagnostic tools available aboard the ship, had been unable to do anything for him except prescribe painkillers, in steadily increasing doses, until she threw up her hands and suggested to Hail’s mother that either she give him some of the vena that they were transporting or she bring him to somewhere to actually find out what was wrong with him. His mother had chosen that second option.

So, instead of going directly to their rendez-vous point with their latest customer, the _Bluebeetle_ was on its way to Redding Station, a pirate fortress constructed in the ruins of a mining facility that had been abandoned about a hundred years prior. Hail had been there once before, when he was a child, but it was the kind of place that his family typically avoided. It was a specialty station, with a reputation for dealing in esoteric medical procedures that couldn’t be had elsewhere. It was the kind of place you went if you wanted true body modifications. Genetic modification of embryos could be done at most black stations, but there were only a few places where really high quality genetic material could be purchased. It was that kind of place. The _Bluebeetle_ had passed through here about eight years ago, trading a precious share of their cargo for a complicated surgery to remove the captain’s brother’s brain tumor. It was the same doctor that they were taking Hail to see now.

For Hail’s part, he spent most of his time alone in the furthest corners of the ship, usually one of the 0G areas, with all the lights off and no one around, floating like a fetus in the womb. He had had a low grade headache, a throbbing hum that pressed underneath all of his thoughts, for months, and it seemed to him like that pain had reached back into his past such that it had always been part of him. It grew far worse whenever he was near anyone else— perhaps it was the sounds that they made, or even just the heat or smell of their bodies that set him off— but the pain would spike into something almost unbearable. Hail would stiffen and freeze and try to bear it, but there was only so much that he could do. What he wanted most, then, was the thing that was least possible to have: some comfort from another person. Instead, he had to crawl away to these dark hiding places, ask to be assigned tasks to work on alone, and stay as far away as he could get from everyone else.

The only times he felt real relief was when he took the shuttle, or one of the dogfighters out, flying on patrol away from the _Bluebeetle_ itself. When he explained this to the doctor, she had chalked it up as adrenaline helping with the headaches, and had prescribed him a stimulant accordingly. This did nothing but make him even jumpier. His cousin, Cast-No-Doubts, traded him his second best knife for the rest of the bottle of stimulants, and Hail was glad to be rid of them.

He was hiding in his usual haunt, one of the empty storage areas in the hold, when his mother came to find him. He somehow knew even before she opened the door and let all the light in that she was in the hallway. Perhaps he had grown sensitive even to the changes in air pressure of someone moving throughout the hallways of the ship nearby, since their appearance always signalled that oncoming pain.

“Hail,” his mother said softly, “Are you in here?”

“Yeah,” he said, swinging his arm to orient himself towards her, the kind of reorientation that took some practice in 0G. Her concern for him was palpable, as was the nervousness in her broad shoulders, silhouetted against the hall light.

She was in her forties, with pale skin and short brown hair touched with gray at the roots. She was still taller than he was, but that wouldn’t be for much longer, since he had plenty of growing to do yet. They looked similar, though, certainly like mother and son, with ruddy cheeks and small, watery eyes in a broad and flat face. Hail’s mother had always doted on him, and he loved her in return.

“Are you ready to go?” she asked.

“We’re there already?”

She glanced down at her watch. “We should be making the last jump in about five minutes. The captain wants us on a shuttle as fast as possible after that.”

Hail nodded. “Okay. I’m ready.”

“You packed a bag?”

“I hope we don’t have to stay.”

His mother sighed. “If we stay, that means there’s something that can be done to fix the problem. And I’ll be with you the whole time.”

“I know.” Her concern was as touching as her presence was unbearable, his head throbbing like a wound. “Thank you.”

She reached towards him and ruffled his hair, and he tried not to shy away from the touch, wanting it and hating it at the same time. “Come on,” she said. “Get your bag.”

It didn’t take long after that for them to load onto the shuttle. Hail’s cousin, God’s Grace, was watching with wide eyes as he packed his bag in. She was openly jealous of him getting to leave the ship. “Go away, Grace,” Hail told her. “You’re getting in the way.”

“I want to come,” she said. Her voice and jealousy were like spikes in his ears. “How come you get to go out?”

“Because I have a medical problem,” he said. She knew the saga, of course, and was just teasing him.

“You don’t look sick,” she said. “Besides, you sold your—“

Hail grabbed her bodily before his mother could hear her saying that he had been dealing drugs to his cousins. “They’re going to pull out a chunk of my brain,” he said to her as he kicked off the shuttle bay floor, dragging her by the waist towards the exit. “Like they did to Uncle Maker.”

Grace didn’t let him shove her out the door, grabbing on to the side of it with both hands to stop him from getting rid of her completely. “Tell them to put the chunk in a jar. I’ll give you…” She contemplated the trade value of a slice of Hail’s brain for a moment, even as he gently tried to wrestle her out. She was limber and just wriggled out of his way, though. “I’ll give you my jade earrings for it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

“How big of a chunk are we talking, by the way?” she asked.

“About the entire size of your brain. I’ve got plenty to spare.”

“Oooh,” she said. “Good one.”

“Grace,” his mother called. “Say goodbye so we can clear the bay.”Grace looked at Hail for a second. “Hey, don’t die, alright?”

“I won’t,” he said. “Thanks.”

She squirmed out of his grip and headed out down the hallway, expertly pulling herself along by the handholds on the walls. The pressure in Hail’s skull lessened fractionally, and he shut the bay door and engaged the safety lock.

The shuttle itself was small and cramped, the oldest and worst one in the _Bluebeetle_ ’s roster. Hail didn’t even bother asking his mother if he would be allowed to fly it, because he knew that the answer would be no. He was a good pilot, but his mother was already sitting in the pilot’s seat and anxiously running down the pre-flight checklist, voices crackling over the radio letting his mother know the status of the ship and when she could launch.

“How are you feeling, Hail?” his mother asked as he settled into his seat, strapping the seat harness down.

“Okay for this second,” he said, which wasn’t really true. His head was throbbing with his mother next to him, but it wasn’t as though that was going to get any better, and he didn’t want to worry her more.

She nodded. “Nervous?”

“No,” he said. She was more nervous than he was. Hail wasn’t sure what he felt. He tended towards a lack of optimism when it came to things like this. His limited worldview made him tend to believe that if the _Bluebeetle_ ’s doctor couldn’t cure something, it simply couldn’t be cured, and he was either going to have to live with his headaches or die from them. It was a fatalist attitude, but most people tended towards fatalism at his age.

“I’m sure this will go well,” she said. Hail nodded as she signalled to the _Bluebeetle_ ’s control room to remove the air from the shuttle bay and open the doors. The shuttle lifted off from its magnetic hold on the bay wall with a satisfying jerk, then his mother expertly steered them out of the bay into the blackness of space. Hail got one glance at the rocky, round hulk of the ship behind them.

It was a long trip to the station, as the captain had decided that it was more expedient to not dock the ship and instead just allow the two visitors to make the trip in a shuttle. Letting even a subset of the crew have shore leave on an unfamiliar station outside their normal route was asking for trouble, so it was best to keep the _Bluebeetle_ at a distance. Hail spent the several-hour journey staring out the window, while his mother grew progressively more nervous beside him. The plan was to speak with the doctor, see if they could get a diagnosis, and if so, if there was a treatment available. If whatever Hail’s problem was could be treated, then he and his mother would stay on Redding Station alone for his treatment and recovery, while the _Bluebeetle_ went off on her normal route. They would be picked up in about a month’s time, in that case. Of course, the alternative, that there was no treatment, meant that they would return home to their ship immediately. 

Redding Station orbited a red dwarf star, at a distance of about ten light-minutes. The station itself was, like the _Bluebeetle_ , made out of a huge chunk of rock, though it could be much larger, since there was no size limit imposed by the presence of a stardrive. The station was in a field of similar rocks, perhaps a former planetoid destroyed by some collision, spread out in a rough orbit around the star. It had once been used for mining, but had been long abandoned, and the infrastructure had been taken over by pirates setting up shop. The station was the permanent or semi-permanent home of some thirty thousand people, which was a number that Hail could scarcely comprehend. His own family numbered about three hundred. Hail had been on some of the larger black stations, of course, but not since his headaches had started, and he had never once been down on an actual planet. So that number, thirty thousand, was both overwhelming and completely meaningless.

Docking their shuttle with the station was a complicated negotiation over the radio, and this was the only reason that Hail was glad his mother was in the pilot’s seat. She knew how to handle these formalities much better than he did. Their shuttle slid towards the looming station, a metal door opened, landing lights illuminated for them, and they parked inside the airlock, waiting for the sound of low-pressure alarms to slowly become audible as the bay filled with air and transmitted the noise to their shuttle. 

Hail’s headache was worsening, perhaps out of stress, and the lights were developing auras in his vision, a telltale sign that he needed to remove himself from the situation and get to a dark room, but there was no dark room for him to retreat to, so he clenched his jaw and stood next to his mother as she paid the docking fee and they were allowed into the station itself. 

The station was clean and well-maintained, the Redding family who ran it having pride in their home, and a reputation to maintain. Like all other stations he had been on, the main living areas were one huge rotating drum, not the narrow rings of ships. He and his mother made their way through the well marked corridors towards the main floor of the drum, where there was the general marketplace, the business sector where they would meet the doctor.

Hail’s headache throbbed more, like there was some kind of gigantic, external force pressing against his mind. He clutched at the sleeve of his mother’s jumpsuit, feeling childish but not wanting to get separated from her as they entered the gravity section.

The marketplace was crowded, and Hail’s mother pulled him along. Every person who brushed past Hail felt like a needle was being stabbed into his mind.

His mother noticed his discomfort, leaning towards him. “I’m sorry, Hail, we’ll be out of the crowd in a second, just a little more.”

She turned out to be wrong about that, and they had to pass through one of the least pleasant areas of the market. Black stations sold most things that could turn a profit to sell. Halen’s family was certainly no stranger to this, as they ran a very lucrative drug trade, moving primarily the raw materials to make the potent drug vena to manufacturing facilities, then picking up the final product and passing it along to distributors on the outsides of populated star systems. But drugs were just one of the many things that passed in this underground trade; weapons were common, counterfeit goods flourished, anything that was difficult to buy or sell elsewhere. But this also sometimes included the buying and selling of human beings. They were passing through the slave areas now, the lights like a battering ram on Halen’s consciousness. He clutched his mother’s arm. He felt far too much, pressing in on him from all sides, an overwhelming pain.

“Mom,” he managed, and then he felt his knees buckle, and he hit the textured metal ground, stone unconscious.

Hail came to laying on some sort of bed, underneath bright, blue-tinged lights. His mother was holding his hand, and he could hear her speaking to someone he didn’t know. His head was still throbbing, but far less potently than it had before he passed out. He managed to sit up.

“You gave your mother quite a scare, Mr. Vinright,” the man said. He was wearing a white coat, so Hail made the assumption that this was the doctor they had come to Redding Station to see.

“How are you feeling, Hail?” his mother asked.

“Okay,” Hail said, which was, again, a lie, but he wasn’t about to pass out again. He was woozy, and his mother handed him a bottle of water, which he drank from gratefully. “How long was I out for?”

“About ten minutes,” his mother said. “We just got you here.”

Hail looked around and realized that the bed he had been lying on was more of a gurney, with wheels. He nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t apologize,” the doctor said. “I’m hopeful that you’ve come to the right place, for me to help you.” There was something half-predatory in his tone, but Hail had no choice but to trust him, so he nodded again. “Could you explain to me exactly what you felt caused you to pass out? Your mother said this had never happened before.”

“It was like there was this pressure,” Hail said. “All of a sudden, that was just getting worse and worse as we walked. I already had a migraine aura. All the lights were too much, maybe.”

“Hmm,” the doctor said. “The lights in that area tend to be particularly intense. Do you have a history of epilepsy?”

“No,” Hail said.

He was patient as the doctor ran him through a whole host of medical tests then, from rapid analysis blood work to eventually sending him to lay down in a huge machine that scanned his brain. He and his mother waited patiently as the doctor retreated to a back room to examine the results and see if there was some diagnosis he could come to. Halen did wonder if he had some kind of tumor, one that the limited scanners on board the _Bluebeetle_ hadn’t been able to pick up. Perhaps something deep in his spinal column that was wreaking havoc on his nerves and sending false pain-signals up through his brain. He didn’t understand what the possibilities were.

The doctor eventually came back out. “Well, I have good news and bad news.”

His mother tensed up beside him. “What’s the bad news?” she asked.

“I can’t find anything wrong with you,” he said, nodding at Hail. “There’s nothing wrong with your brain in any way that I can detect, and certainly nothing that I could operate on to fix.”

“That’s the bad news?” Hail asked.

“It means that there’s nothing that I can do for you,” he said. “I can say take common epilepsy precautions, since light may be a trigger, and I can also say that you should take migraine medication, but it’s not a tumor or anything of the sort, which is really my specialty.”

Hail could feel his mother’s relief, or his own, that they wouldn’t be trapped on this station for a month for him to have brain surgery. “Oh,” Hail said.

“If things get significantly worse, or if you notice changes in your vision, come back, and we’ll do another round of tests, but at this moment there’s nothing I can do for you.”

“Is there anyone else you could direct us to?” his mother asked.

The doctor nodded, and wrote down a name and location of another black station on a piece of paper. “This is a colleague of mine who specializes in traumatic brain injuries. She might be good for a second opinion. But with things like that, there’s no easy fix. It’s often mitigated.”

“I’ve never had a concussion,” Hail said.

The doctor made a noncommittal noise. “You may not have hit your head, but I’ve seen spacers, children especially, who have non-typical injuries due to hard stops or starts in weightlessness. The brain can take a real beating without ever actually crashing into something. But all I can really say is that you don’t have a tumor to take out, nor do you have any obvious malformations or pressures in your skull.”

That was as good as they were going to get, apparently. So Hail and his mother headed back out to their shuttle, leaving the rotating ring on a different route so that they would not pass through the same area with the bright lights that might have been responsible for Hail passing out. 

Back in the shuttle, his mother worried the piece of paper the doctor had given her through her hands. “I’ll talk to Captain Winding about visiting this other station,” she said as they sailed away from Redding. Hail’s headache was abating back to its usual dull throb.

“It’s okay, mom,” Hail said. “Don’t worry about it.”

She glanced over at him, the lights of the control panel lighting up her face in splotches of blue and red. “It’s my job to worry about you, you know. And I hate to see you suffer. It hurts my heart, too.”

Hail knew that, felt an echo of her concern in his own chest, accompanied by the persistent throb of headache, and wanted nothing more than to comfort her. He resolved to talk about his head less, to hide the problem, if that would make her happy.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s anything that can be done about it, so there’s no point in worrying,” he said.

“Don’t resign yourself to living like this, Hail. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

He nodded, but was silent.

* * *

_1518/03/38 AFE, aboard the_ Bluebeetle, _Altas Starzone_

Life returned to normal on board the _Bluebeetle_ for a while, with the ship travelling along her normal course. Hail’s mother thought it would be a while before the ship could afford to deviate from their route to go see another specialist, and no one wanted the Hail and an escort to leave the ship and hitch a ride from someone else to get to to this other doctor, so further investigations of his problem, since it had been deemed non-life threatening, were put on hold. Hail was glad enough for that. He didn’t like being the center of attention; thinking about how everyone was thinking about him made his headache worse.

One stop on their trade route was a planet called Altas, where they were scheduled to deliver several thousand kilograms of vena to a buyer. Pirate ships could not approach planets too closely, nor did their planetside buyers have access to stardrives in order to perform a meetup far outside the star system. So, when it came time to deliver a shipment of drugs, a meeting place and time was prearranged with their customer, within the starzone, but usually several light-hours out from the planet itself. The pirate ship would jump in, exchange payment, unload their cargo to the customer in their slower-than-light transport ships, agree on a time and location for their next meeting, and then jump out. Hail had seen this process happen thousands of times, and so he was not particularly excited to be jumping in. In fact, he was more excited by the fact that he was not on the duty roster for the day, so he could hide out in his usual place in one of the empty cargo bays and do nothing. He didn’t like meeting the customers, even if he never spoke to them and instead just suited up and helped to move the giant cargo crates from one ship to the other. 

He was floating relatively peacefully in the bay, working on a project that he had thought up during one of his school lessons, which was a different way of knotting the giant nets that they sometimes used to space out different sections of cargo. He thought that a circular weave, like a spider web, might be more interesting than the normal rectangular weave. He had disassembled an old, ripped net, and was carefully working on knotting together his new version, though he was discovering that perhaps the reason that they made it in squares was because it was significantly easier to keep all the wiry rope organized.

Hail was absorbed completely in this activity, when suddenly a knife of pain crashed through his head, and he dropped the wire he had been sawing at to clutch at his temples, squeezing his eyes shut as the feeling overcame him, his heart rate spiking with a heretofore unknown terror. He thought he was about to die.

He only had a moment to experience this sensation, however, because the _Bluebeetle_ ’s ship alarm began to sound, caterwauling and echoing through the hallways. The main lights cut out at the same time, being replaced with the sporadic flashing-red emergency lights. Hail had an instinctive reaction to this, and it cut directly through the pain in his head, even though his eyes were watering with it.

Hail was floating untethered in the center of the bay, so when he heard the thud of an impact on the side of the ship, it didn’t immediately register that the massive bulk of the _Bluebeetle_ was moving, the wall coming towards him. He braced himself for impact, and let his shoulder take the brunt of the collision as he grabbed for handholds on the wall. He caught his knife, the one he had traded his cousin for, and kept it in his hand as he dragged himself along the wall to the bay door.

The ship’s alarm could only mean one of a few things: either there was some kind of mechanical emergency, or they were under attack. Since the alarm had gone off before he heard the impact of something on the side of the ship, he had to assume it was the second one. 

In Hail’s lifetime, he had never been involved in an actual fight on board the ship. His family had engaged in dogfight scuffles, once or twice, and on one particularly memorable occasion, Hail had dragged one of his older cousins away from a barfight on a station that had gotten far out of hand. But never once had the _Bluebeetle_ herself been invaded, and nor had they hunted down another ship, as some pirates were liable to do. His family was relatively non-combative, as far as pirates went. Their stardrive was less than two decades old, so they had no reason to try to hunt for another. So, while Hail had been trained, theoretically, in what to do should the ship come under direct attack, he had never before had to put that knowledge in motion.

The first thing that happened when the alarm was sounded was that all doors went into an auto-lock mode, and had to be keyed open with the passcode. This was supposed to slow down invaders and give the crew time to corner them, but it presented an impediment to Hail exiting the bay he was currently trapped in. His eyes were blurring with pain as he tried to remember the nine digit code to key in to the numpad next to the door. His finger shook and nearly mis-hit as he pressed the buttons. It took him two tries to get it right, but eventually the door slid open.

The main lights had gone off in the hallway, another attempt to confuse attackers who would not know their way around the rather labyrinthine interior of the ship. The flashing red emergency lights were enough to see by, though, so Hail didn’t bother finding a utility closet to get a flashlight. 

He dragged himself with one hand through the corridors, floating quickly, his heart beating in his throat. He had no idea what was happening, and he wanted to find his parents, or any of his older cousins or aunts or uncles to tell him what to do and where to go. Hail was old enough now that he would be expected to defend the ship, so he didn’t go towards the safe room near the engine, where all of his younger cousins, or the people who were too old to fight, would go. Instead, he made his way towards the bay where he knew most of his family would have been at work readying cargo to unload. 

As Hail turned a corner, aiming for the next sealed emergency bulkhead door, he saw a glowing light along the door’s edge: a plasma cutter was being used to break the door’s seal from the other side. He had somehow run face first into the enemy. He estimated that it would take another thirty seconds or so for them to actually break the door down, but he had to make a choice: stay and fight or run. He could hardly think over the pain in his brain, the flashing lights, the throbbing alarm sound. He glanced at the gauge that was on the side of all doors in a ship, the one that showed air pressure on both sides, and confirmed that even if the door opened, he wouldn’t be exposed to vacuum. The other side had normal pressure, at least for now.

Hail had waited too long to make a choice, and the plasma cutter sawed through the seal with the toxic smell of burning rubber and melted metal. Hail pressed himself against the ceiling as the door swung open— a cheap trick that wouldn’t fool any spacer— and watched as a group of four suited men came through the hatch. Their suits were marked with what Hail assumed was the Altas planetary police insignia. Hail was surprised at how clumsy they were in the gravity free environment, and at how small they were. He knew intellectually that most pirates (himself included) were genetically modified to be larger than average, and he had met plenty of former ground-dwellers in his life, but never before had he put too much thought into why he had been genetically modified to be large. He had the distinct, and perhaps mistaken, impression that he, with just his knife, could take these four down by himself.

They didn’t notice him as they passed directly underneath him, Hail hardly even breathing. He continued to hesitate, not sure if he should let them go by and continue on his way to find his family, or risk trying to attack them from behind.

His choice was made when he heard, further down the hall where he had come from, the noise of the door opening, and a familiar shriek. His cousin, God’s Grace, had stumbled directly into the corridor. The pain spiked in Hail’s brain, and he kicked off the ceiling and lunged at the backs of the four policemen, all of whom were lunging towards Grace. Even though she was only thirteen, she was about the size of the shortest suited officer. She fumbled at her belt for her own knife, then kicked off the wall and shot upwards towards the top of the corridor, narrowly avoiding the blade carried by the furthest agent.

Hail had one free shot, having not yet been spotted by the intruders, so he stuck his knife arm out before him as he flew through the air, and it struck home with the full force of Hail’s body behind it, directly in the back of the agent who had come through the door last. His suit muffled whatever scream he let out, but he and Hail, now one body attached by a knife, crashed through the other three.

Hail’s head throbbed, blistering through his skull, absolute terror, overwhelming pain. He was killing a man. The man beneath his hands was dying. In his addled state, he somehow was both himself and outside of himself, killing and being killed. The moment stretched on forever. Hail felt the pain of the knife as if in his own body, too-vivid of an imagination keeping him trapped and not letting him move.

“Hail!” Grace shrieked. This snapped him back to himself.

Hail tried to pry his knife free of the limp body beneath him, but he didn’t have time; one of the others had recovered from the surprise and was striking his own knife towards Hail’s face. In the close quarters of the ship’s hallways, guns were too unpredictable; even these planet bound people intruders seemed to understand that.

The knife swooped towards Hail’s eye, too fast for him to get out of the way, and a greater fear than he had ever known filled his entire mind, blocking out everything else: his headache, the flashing lights, the alarm, Grace screaming behind him, the bloody spurting out of the knife wound his blade was in. It faded into nothingness, and time seemed to stop for a second. There was nothing in the whole universe except Hail and that gleaming, triangular knife blade, glinting in the red light. It would go right through his brain, and that would be the end of him, right there, he knew it. 

There was a sensation in his mind, similar to the searing headache he had had for months, and Hail let it overwhelm him for a second, unable to do anything else. His whole body tingled with that rush of fear and adrenaline, like some force was swelling up underneath his skin, his soul ready to depart his body when that knife came down. It burst out of him in a wave, that sensation, the knife a fraction of a centimeter away from his face.

But there was no impact, no pain. The man holding the knife reared back, as though he had been shoved, the knife spiraling out of his hand and clattering down the metal hallway. Hail didn’t have time to think about or be surprised by this, because he was back to pulling his own knife out of the body below him. It came free with a sickening, sucking sensation and a spray of blood, black under the red emergency lights, and he lunged again at the man who was closest to Grace, while she dodged out of the way again, more nimble in the corridor than anyone else.

It was a brutal fight, Grace ending up clinging to the back of one man, wresting his arms down with her legs while she tried to stab through the shield of his helmet. Hail took a knife to his left arm, a slash rather than a stab, and the blood spewed out of the wound, forming great globules in the air as he tried to kick his assailant in the chest.

For all that Grace and Hail had the agility and size advantage, they were outnumbered, and a thirteen year old and a fifteen year old with minimal combat training were not good matches for professional soldiers. They held out for about two minutes, but then there was noise from down the hallway, and Hail’s uncle, Grace’s father, God’s Glory, barreled down the hallway with his long combat knife in hand and made quick and vicious work of the remaining two intruders. 

Hail watched in dizzy horror as Glory barreled towards them, slashing his knife through the throat of one before he could move out of the way, and stabbing another in the gut. Grace had managed to get her knife inside the helmet of the one she was clinging to, directly downwards through the top of the skull, and it stuck out by the hilt as the mirrored visor of the helmet spattered with blood. 

Hail’s heart was beating in some kind of massive echo of terror and victory, and he couldn’t quite focus on the scene in front of him until it was all over. Every strike had felt like a blow to his own body, and he cursed himself for his sympathetic imagination. If it hadn’t been for his own adrenaline coursing through him, he thought he would have probably passed out like he had at Redding Station. He was glad he hadn’t, because he surely would have died.

Hail had killed one, as had Grace, and they took a moment to recover in the hallway, Hail clutching uselessly at his wounded arm while Glory checked Grace over for any wounds. She had come out of this unscathed, except for her father then slapping her for running away from the group to find Hail. She was undeterred, and the grumpy expression on her face as she rubbed her cheek told her father as much. He escorted Hail and Grace back to the saferoom in the ship, which Grace protested vociferously, wanting to continue to fight. Hail might have protested too, but his head was screaming in pain louder than his arm, and he needed stitches, or he would be worse than useless in another fight.

As they sat in the saferoom, crowded in with all the kids and older people, the doctor stitched up his arm. Hail mostly stared into space, his head throbbing with the tense mass of people around, but he felt that something had changed within him. It wasn’t just the fact that he had killed someone else, though that was part of it, and he was sure that the true horror of that would hit him at some point, but he kept returning to the way that the knife had slid away from his face, for no reason that he could imagine. Why was he still alive?

It only took about another two hours for the _Bluebeetle_ ’s crew to clear out the intruders, hunting down every member of the Altas police that had come to try to destroy their ship. They sent out their dogfighters, too, to destroy the slower-than-light ships that had been waiting at the rendez-vous point to ambush them. In the end, the crew of the _Bluebeetle_ lost five people, and there was major damage to the bay doors where the attackers had latched their ships and sawed their way in, but that was nothing compared to the hundred or so police that had tried and failed to take the ship. They had been unprepared for the ferocity, tenacity, and skill of the pirate crew.

As usual, the surefire way to destroy a pirate ship would have been to hit it with a conventional warhead, but everyone in the saferoom kept talking about how the Altas police had gotten greedy. They must have wanted the stardrive, to sell back to the imperial government, or they might have wanted the _Bluebeetle_ ’s crew mostly alive, to make a show trial out of executing them. 

Still, even though they had definitively won the engagement, the mood was somber as they cleared out the bodies of the police, dumping them unceremoniously out the airlock, and took gentle care of their own dead. No one could even think about relaxing until the ship had waited the rest of its eight hours for the stardrive to be ready to jump away.

The funerals would be later, but that night, everyone rested, all work except for the most vital being suspended, to give the crew a chance to breathe. Hail’s parents had both come out unscathed, both having gone out in dogfighters to chase down the police ships. His father poured Hail a congratulatory stiff drink on his first kill, while his mother tutted over the stitches on his arm. He recounted the whole story to them, though he left out the part where the knife had moved on its own. He was beginning to chalk that up to the intruder not knowing how to move in zero gravity.

He fell asleep quickly that night, in his narrow bed in his tiny room, but woke up in the middle of the night, his head feeling clearer than it had in a long time. He left his parents’ apartment and padded through the halls of the ship, everything very quiet, nearly everyone asleep. He felt like he was still half in a dream, except that the sting of the stitches in his arm was real. He didn’t have a destination in mind, just that he wanted to walk around the silent, empty ship. Out of some lingering instinct, he had strapped his utility belt on when he got dressed, and this included his knife in its holster. 

Hail took the knife out as he walked. It was clean now; he had washed all the blood off of it when he had gotten back to his room, but he looked wonderingly at this object that he had used to kill. He could easily bring to mind the sensation of it: the dull thud of impact, the tearing of the plastic suit, the warm sinking into flesh. It disgusted him, and he felt nauseous. The terror of the man beneath him, the way he had struggled, it wound together in Hail’s brain. He could feel the man’s pain just as he could feel his own.

And the knife that had slid away from his face. He couldn’t stop thinking about that, either. He balanced the tip of the knife on the heavy callous of his index finger for a second, dancing it around in the air to stop it from falling to the ground.

What had that feeling been, in his whole body, when the knife had been coming towards him? Not the fear, though that had sparked it, but the electric tingle that had coursed through him. He thought about this as he focused on keeping the knife balanced on his fingertip, until the knife started to wobble too far to one side, and he couldn’t keep it steady. But there was that feeling within him, in that split moment between realizing that the knife was beginning to tumble and instinctively grabbing for the blade. He reached for that fizzing sensation, it rose to his fingertips, and somehow, against all reasonable laws of physics, the knife stayed frozen in the air, tilted at about a forty-five degree angle, with its tip resting on Hail’s fingertip.

He laughed unsteadily, the sound echoing through the hallway. The odd sensation within him broke at that, and the knife finished its tilt and fall, clattering to the ground. Hail slumped back against the hallway wall, sliding to the floor himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe I should have been more descriptive in this chapter, but I also don’t want to bog the pace down with that? let me know if I should have gone into more detail on anything.
> 
> this is intended to be able to be read without knowledge of main body itsoh, so hopefully it’s not too confusing what’s going on here
> 
> if you ever feel like there’s something I could be doing better like literally feel free to shout it out. i have trouble striking a balance with writing sometimes lol
> 
> but I hope you enjoyed the chapter


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